The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) thinkthank calculated that the company has received £631m of public money since its controversial privatisation. An FT/FE Week investigation this week found that in the four years since it was sold off, it parent company spent 84% of its income, most of which came from the taxpayer, on payments to managers and financiers.

Joe Dromey, a senior research fellow at the IPPR, said it was “truly shocking” that Learndirect’s owners, which ultimately include Lloyds Bank, appear to have “raked in vast amounts of public money, extracted tens of millions of pounds from Learndirect, loaded the company with debt, overseen a catastrophic decline in standards, and tried to stop the truth coming out”